The Cheapest Way To Promote Affiliate Products Using Facebook Ads

Charly Wigstrom
Thursday, July 12, 2018

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10 Things You Need To Know Before Running Your First Ad for affiliate Products

It seems like everyone is on Facebook these days, and it’s not just for keeping up with college friends or your crazy Aunt Sally either. There is a lot of business that happens on Facebook as well. You may even be considering using Facebook Ads as part of your next affiliate promotion. If so, this article is for you. Below I’ll share with you 9 tips for running Facebook Ads for affiliate promotions.

1. Create your own landing pages

Sending people directly to your affiliate link is a great way to get your ads banned.

Instead, send them to your own landing page. This could be a simple page where you pre-sell whatever it is you’re promoting…whether it’s a piece of pre-launch content or the sales page…and invite them to click through to download it.

Or, even better, you can use this as an opportunity to grow your list by turning these people into subscribers to YOUR list, and then sending them on to the content or offer you are promoting.

And again, just a reminder, make sure that all your landing pages are compliant with Facebook Ad guidelines.

2. Start hyper-focused, then expand

Whether you’re advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google or any other PPC (pay-per-click) network, start off your targeting hyper-focused, then expand from there.

I started doing paid advertising with my company in the insurance leads industry, when we entered a new market or tested out new keywords, we would only run ads from 1-4pm each day. Why? Because that is when our conversions were the highest.

That allowed us to get our best results.

Here are some examples of what I mean by being hyper-focused:

Single moms, 25-34 who homeschool their kids and live in the south

Male business owners, Married, 45+ with no kids at home

Diabetic males, single, 30-49 in the United States

I’m not saying you have to be that targeted forever, but when you are starting out and haven’t run ads for an affiliate promotion before, you want to target the absolute best potential people, so be sure you start off hyper-focused.

Let’s say you are going to spend $100 per day on ads and each click will cost you $1 (just to make the math easy).

Do you want those 100 clicks to be spread across the entire range of demographics, interests, geography, etc.? Or do you want them focused on the exact person that is most likely to buy the product you’re offering as an affiliate?

Of course, you want the people who are an exact match for what you’re promoting…even if that means you only end up spending $72 instead of the full $100.

NOTE: Generally speaking, you want to avoid targeting people in college or under 25…unless the offer REALLY fits that niche — because they typically don’t have any money!

3. Get clear on the end game

What is your goal with this set of ads?

Is it profitability? In other words, you want to spend $100 and make $200.

Is it to support a friend? You don’t care if you make any money, you just want to make your friend Joe $10,000 in sales and break even…maybe even lose a little. In other words, your number one objective is to help your friend, not necessarily make money.

Is it to boost your standing on an affiliate leaderboard? I’ve done this in previous promotions where the difference in prize money between 3rd place and 4th place is $10,000, so I’m willing to LOSE some money on my ads because I’ll make it up in the prize money.

Just make sure you get very clear on your #1 priority when you start running ads.

4. Know how much time you have

Are you building up page likes, which is a long-term strategy?

Are you promoting a product launch with only 72 hours left?

There’s nothing wrong with either of these goals, but you do need to be clear on how much time you have to run your ads because that will greatly affect the strategy you will use.

You don’t want to employ a strategy that only works in the long term if you only have 48-72 hours left in the promotion, and conversely you don’t want to cram a ton of ad spend into one or two days if you can spread it out over a few weeks and do a little more testing and tweaking

5. Make your picture relevant and interesting

This is pretty self-explanatory. If you’re promoting an offer related to fitness, have a picture related to fitness.

If you’re promoting a productivity product, have a picture of a stressed out person.

As a general rule, across most industries and niches, the best converting color is going to be red. That means red borders, red backgrounds, and red text.

However, as we’ll discuss in a later tip, the ultimate solution for your ads is to test it.

6. Tell them what to do

Never overestimate people’s ability to read between the lines and know what to do.

Never overestimate people’s ability to read between the lines and know what to do. Always make your call to action clear.

If you don’t tell them exactly what you want them to do, you will miss out on likes, subscribers, opt-ins, sales, commissions, or whatever result you are going for.

Make it as simple as possible for them — tell them exactly what you want them to do.

If you want them to click a link and sign up for a free training, make sure your ad says “click here to sign up for this free training”.

7. Start off with CPM bidding

CPM bidding is cost per thousand impressions.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, “Charly, how do you get ‘cost per thousand’ from ‘CPM’?”

It’s Roman numerals, I didn’t come up with the acronyms, I just use them.

Anyway, when you start, focus on your CPM (cost per thousand impressions), then once you get refined you can switch over to CPC (cost per click).

That being said, I’ve had good luck with sticking with CPM because eventually, I’ll have an ad that outperforms the market, so I’m better off paying per impression than per click because it ends up being cheaper.

At any rate, always start off with CPM and then switch to CPC later on, if it makes sense to do so.